Sunday, 29 July 2012

Trigger warning: This post deals with the Reddit thread featuring confessions of rape and my responses to it. Please be aware of that before reading either it or linking to the original thread. I really really debated whether to publish this or not in case it ended up being more triggering than the original thread. But I decided to after reading this piece on the Guardian today where a majority of people decided to disregard the information because it's not the right kind of site (where have we all that line before?) to talk about it on, leading to a situation where they don't believe what victims say about rape or self confessed rapists say about rape so keen are they to pretend rape isn't an issue. I think the thread is genuine. It's too similar to accounts I've heard and read from victims and I just don't feel it can be brushed aside so easily. I decided the opportunity for education was there instead of just going 'la la la' a lot. You may decide this is an excellent opportunity to go make tea and eat cake instead. You know what's best for you.

Friday, 27 July 2012

This week we had deja vu when West Mercia police popped up with their
cliche campaign saying the same old 'don't drink too much or you'll do
something you regret' message. This is incredibly offensive. I
didn't actually do anything when I was raped, except try very hard to
stay alive and contain the immediate suffering. Being raped is by its
very nature not an event you are active in. It's passive, because you
don't want it to be happening. Therefore telling me not to do things
I'll regret in this context is like telling the wind not to blow.

And regret is not really the word I'd use about rape. I regret
wearing shoes that make my feet look like trotters. I regret that 90s
purple iridescent lipgloss from Miss Selfridge. I reget nipping to the
loo, missing the nightbus and having to wait 40 minutes. Not once in the
8 years since I was raped and I've lain awake at night riven with
misery or trying not to cry, has the word regret seemed adequate. It
seems too meek, too minimising. The fact they've used the idea of
'regretful sex' and rape in the same sentence just heaps insult upon
injury.

Regretful sex is no bloody concern of the police. Waking up and
realising the hot guy from last night actually wears loafers and has a
cuddly golf club on his bed does not need 999. It needs lots of tea and a
self deprecating anecdote with friends. Going on highly scientific
discussion with friends, regretful sex has usually become amusing by the
time you've left the situation and had a shower. I'm still waiting for
the moment I find being raped even remotely titterworthy. There's no
correlation between the two and it's extremely detrimental to suggest
they go together as if rape is just sex you regret a lot and not an
actual criminal offence with serious consequences.

It's the kind of myth that mutates into victim blaming on juries
especially and like everything else about this campaign, it ties into
the idea that rape is something that happens because of alcohol and
because a man and woman were left un-chaperoned after being out and 'he
said, she said'. It ignores the fact that most rapes do not happen like
this and that 80% of rapes happen with someone you know and that
you're most likely to be raped in your own home. And for all the 'victim
warning' that these campaigns profess to
offer they actually leave women more vulnerable in many ways because
they teach women to look for rape in only one aspect of their life, but
not to say 'it was rape' when their ex demands sex when he comes to
collect his CDs after you've split or your new squeeze refuses to use a
condom and keeps going or your husband hits you unless you agree.
Instead of being able to clearly identify those scenarios as rape, women
blame themselves, feel guilty and stay frightened and unable to speak
out at all, often remaining trapped.

But being raped 'the right way' according to these police posters,
still isn't a guarantee that you'll be taken seriously if you've
committed some kind of infringement according to their helpful list. Partly because it's been knocked
into me since I was about six to be careful because I'm a woman and
partly because it seems natural, I did everything on that list on a
night out. I didn't drink while stressed or tired, I ate a meal, I
ordered a glass of water, I didn't leave my drink unattended, I drink
incredibly slowly anyway and I'd planned my route home in detail. I was
still raped. Because the barman spiked my drink. In fact he spiked my
glass of water. If I'd quaffed my drinks a bit faster, not bother to
rehydrate and just drunkenly lurched to the bus stop, I'd have been
fine.

Actually rehydration is my nemesis. I was making a cup of tea the first
time to make sure I didn't wake up with a headache after a few drinks in
my house just before Christmas when my rapist snuck into the kitchen.
We all thought he'd left, everyone else had gone to bed and it turned
out he'd been hiding. I was only up because I was waiting for the kettle
boil. If I'd merrily staggered down the stairs to bed singing Santa
Baby and keeping everyone up, I'd have been fine. But that peppermint
teabag put a target on my back and the quiche I'd had for dinner didn't
protect me at all in the end. I was still raped.

Of all the women I know who have been raped (and sadly that's quite a
list), none of them would have been helped by that checklist or the
knowledge of self defence. Even the two who had been drinking enough to
admit they were quite pissed wouldn't have been helped by alternating
their drinks or planning their taxi route, because they were asleep when
they were raped anyway. The only thing that would have kept them safe
is if their rapist had kept himself to himself. The same with the women
who took John Worboys' cab because they didn't want to risk an
unlicensed mini-cab or the woman who asked a friend of their boyfriend
to give them a lift home because she thought it would be safer than walking
alone. Being drunk may make your reactions slower, but in my experience,
rapists don't actually give you that much warning they are going to
rape you. It's a crime that relies on surprise and fast reactions don't
always save you. For every sober reaction where self defense floods back
to you and adrenaline makes you superhuman, there is the secret
response no one ever mentions.

Humans don't just respond with fight or flight. There's also freeze.
Sometimes the human brain in its primitive self preservation state
tells you that you can't out-run this sabre toothed tiger. You've just got to
go still and hide in the undergrowth til the threat stops. You have no
control over this. Your body and brain take over and do this because
it's the best way to stop you getting physically hurt or dying. It's
just another way to protect yourself and it's totally normal. I'm never
usually backwards about coming forward when I am displeased and expected
I'd scrap like a mad March hare in a bag. Instead I completely froze.
Even though it probably saved me from really serious injury, I blamed myself
for years for not fighting back because I thought I'd done it wrong.

And that's the problem with these police campaigns. They read like
an etiquette list as if there's a correct way to be raped rather than
rape being wrong. Victims measure their reactions by these lists. Juries
make their decisions based by them. The police and CPS investigate to
certain standards because of these lists. And rapists get given a handy
cheat sheet of how to spot a suitable victim. Some women are more vulnerable, especially former sexual partners, sex workers and women
with mental health issues or disabilities, but these 'don't drink'
campaigns don't teach them or the people round them protection, they
just seek to highlight ways that can be manipulated further. It
reinforces the idea of the 'right rape victim' and reduces the idea of
rape to sex when most people know it's really about power. By making it
seem like an inevitable consequence of a night out it diminishes the
severity and hides it behind the bogeyman of 'drinking'.

Drinking actually means bugger all as a statement of fact. Saying a
rape took place after drinking tells me nothing much. Who was drinking?
Was it the attacker or the victim or both? How much where they drinking?
Where they drunk? If I've had a glass of wine with dinner and then get
the bus home, walk through my estate in the dark and am raped, it could
still be said I'd been 'drinking', but it doesn't really add any
information. Just using that word doesn't mean I was roaring drunk and
gusset up in the gutter but it's often said in such a way to attribute
blame as if when women are drinking it means being incapacitated, but
when men do it, it's normal. It's just another tactic like like the
newspaper telling you what colour hair a rape victim has to belittle the
event and make victims seem like statistics rather than people.

The statistics that count are the conviction rates and that's where the
police should be focusing their efforts. West Mercia (on the most recent
figures I could find, dating from 2007) have a conviction rate of 4.5%. At least South Wales, who ran a
similar campaign last year, are at 7.1%. I'm not suggesting that the
police don't try and prevent crime before it happens. That's common
sense after all. But I suggest they take a tack like the 'Know the Difference' campaign running in Lambeth, South London which addresses
the potential perpetrators and their peers with a non judgemental ad
campaign about a variety of sexual violence outside the home displayed on public
transport, licensed premises and outside clubs and pubs. It combines it
with training barstaff, bouncers and police in the nuances of rape and
consent. This has been combined with new facilities for women needing
help, sits along a council campaign about gendered violence in the home
and has resulted in reports being up a third as women feel less judged
to come forward about rape and sexual assault (which is often seen as
less important because of the focus campaigns like West Mercia's have on
rape only.)

It might seem a bit insulting to some men that they feel they are being
tarred with the same brush as rapists when they would do no such thing,
but it opens a dialogue and helps erode rape myths that are so ingrained
around women, sexual violence and alcohol that even the government
funded Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority routinely docked women's
pay-out after rape if alcohol was involved until a just few years ago.
Keeping those myths going and suggesting that women wouldn't be raped if
they just tried harder to stick to these lists however is a much bigger
injustice and one that destroys many women's lives and prevents rapists
from being punished properly because women fear repeat victimisation on reporting. Women can't do anything about being women
so we need to tackle the societal changes around rape instead and make change that way.

*This post originally appeared at The Vagenda in rebuttal to a previous less favourably received piece on the West Mercia campaign. They offered me the chance to write something when I complained on Twitter and I thank them for that. The original piece was upsetting, but it's good they didn't go on the defensive and allowed for a piece to educate.

Sunday, 22 July 2012

Last week, I had a day out with a dear friend. We took the tube, went to
the West End, picked somewhere for lunch, stopped for a coffee. All
very nice, apart from the fact that the day out was actually because I
had a Disability Living Allowance tribunal in Fox Court in Holborn. Not
quite the treat you'd thought...

I applied for DLA in December 2010. I've been ill and off work since
2003, but some bad benefits advice in around 2005 meant I thought I
wasn't eligible to claim DLA that whole time. While that led to me
losing out a lot of financial support, it was probably also the catalyst
for wanting to become a benefits advisor and make sure other people
don't get caught by poor advice. I'd made the classic mistake of
thinking I had to have carers to get DLA rather than being made aware
that it's about your need for care, rather than the actual provision of
it that qualifies you for the benefit.

After some job training about other benefits, I realised I fitted
the criteria and got a form. Slightly daunted by the size of it, I got
out my favourite pen and started filling it out in my best handwriting,
thinking how hard could it be? Turns out, if you aren't blessed with
government department bureaucracy style thinking superpowers, attempt to be positive
about your conditions and your life and don't usually have someone to help and thus
can't picture how that would work, it's akin to trying to make the
Enigma machine singlehandedly using two bog roll middles and a cornflake
box. The form is a masterpiece in asking a question one way and
expecting the answer another. I ploughed through it, making all the
classic errors everyone else does when they see one for the first time,
especially if they have mental health needs as the prompts are all
physical related.

I said I didn't need help with my medication because I didn't take
psychiatric medication, but didn't know to say that I didn't take them
because I couldn't cope with them, couldn't get them easily due to my
agoraphobia and because of the horrible side effects. I said I had no
night needs because I didn't need anyone to physically help me into bed,
not realising that i should have mentioned not being able to sleep
without the TV on or the nightmares and reliving of PTSD. I didn't
explain how someone could help me day to day because I don't have anyone
to do it. I just wrote down what I thought I needed and felt like I'd
been hit by a truck doing it. Seeing my life in black and white almost
reduced me to tears at a time when I was being taught to be positive
about it. I did the form wrong and it was still one of the hardest
things I've done.

Surprisingly enough they awarded low rate mobility as I need someone
to guide me when outdoors due to agoraphobia, but said I had no care
needs. Thrilled to be around £20 a week better off and passported to
other things like a Freeview upgrade and some help with energy bills
(this depends on your supplier), I didn't query it. I started my
volunteer role and began learning how to fill out DLA forms like a
demon. 8 or 9 months later, able to fill out a full form in under an
hour and half and not having had a single case turned down or need to go
to appeal, I realised I was missing out because I definitely fit the
care criteria myself. I asked for a review form to do a supercession and
see if I could get my award altered.

Taking more than 4 hours to do it, I girded my loins and waded
into the world of being honest about how crap life is most of the time. I
backed it up with prescriptions, social worker reports, Community
Mental Health Team reports, a full psychiatric report from from a
psychiatric hospital, two letters from therapists and medical notes in
some cases going back 15 years. They turned me down. I appealed. They
still turned me down. A tribunal was the only way forward.

The waiting list for tribunals is evergrowing as both Employment
Support Allowance and DLA awards seem to be modelled on finding the Higgs Particle. I asked for mine in October 2011 and it was set for 12th July
2012. Technically this gave me ages to collect further evidence for my
case, but in reality meant I just sort of forgot it was happening
because it was so far in the future. The one thing I did in that time
was after discovering the inaccurate, incomplete and biased report my GP
submitted to DLA was move GP to one who doesn't think I'm a big
malingerer. Unfortunately I dithered about if for so long I ended up
doing it too close to the tribunal and put myself in a situation where
my new GP doesn't have my notes and couldn't write me a supporting
letter.

Trying to comfort myself I'd saved up £45 on that at least, I
gathered up the evidence to show my condition had worsened and that I
had had to be referred to specialist services and found someone to come
with me. I needed someone reliable and able to balance practicality with
being comforting and who wouldn't look horrified by the details of my
life I usually prefer to keep hidden. Turns out I am lucky enough to
have a choice of people to ask, but it had to be my friend A who asked
where was good for lunch nearby and gave me something else to focus on!

I sat down and went through my appeal bundle, sending my supporting
evidence back to them by recorded delivery and picking out where the DWP
were wrong or had ignored evidence or points of eligibility. Three A4
pages of detailed notes later I felt ready to take on the world. I spent
more time choosing what to wear, eventually going for the obvious
choice of what I would normally wear when I left the house. For me that
included my mask of make up and I made a mental note to explain the
healing power of eyeliner to them. We made our way to Holborn in good
time and I realised I was actually incredibly unpleasantly
overwhelmingly anxious (seriously, after 8 years this still surprises
me...)

Greeted by a receptionist who resembled Dolly Parton crossed with
the duffled coat dwarf in Don't Look Now who was annoyed I'd forgotten
my letter, my first reaction to the tribunal was to run far far away. A
quick trip to the toilet reminded me it would be awkward to explain to A
why I'd pissed off and left her in a waiting room, I went back. The
clerk of the session came out and introduced himself and the panel. I'd
been expecting 2 on the panel, so was thrown by the fact there are 3.
You get a doctor, a tribunal judge and a disability expert in a DLA
tribunal, but only the doctor and judge in ESA tribunals. I barely had
to wait before we were off down the glass corridored rabbit warren and
delivered to a large bright room with 3 people waiting.

Pleased to see one was a woman, they explained that they are
independent of the Department of Work and Pensions and are from the
Ministry of Justice. They outlined the judge was there for fairness
while the doctor would ask about my health and the disability expert
would assess how the law of the benefit fitted in with those answers.
And we were off. The female doctor started and I found her pleasant with
an air of neutrality but just enough interaction to be aware she was
human. I did find it odd that she asked me about all my illnesses and
conditions, except the PTSD and everything seemed swerved away from that
elephant in the room for some reason I couldn't quite fathom.

I found the questions from the disability advisor harder to deal
with, party because he looked just like the coelacanth at the Ulster
Museum, but also because it was hard to answer these with my 'sick
person' head on than my 'advisor' head. Part of me knew the point of
eligibility he was raising and wanted to highlight it, but the rest of
me just wanted to kick my heels and complain like a toddler til someone
gave in. I was also massively taken aback to start crying when he asked
me about my night needs. I've sat and discussed the nightmares and
reliving of my rape with plenty of experts over the years, but I've
never shed a tear before. It was like being stripped bare and asked to
beg. I can't remember the last time I felt so exposed and I really
thought at one moment I wasn't going to be able to pull myself back
without collapsing.

But throughout that moment and the rest of the hour long tribunal,
the people involved were polite, listened to me without patronising or
interrupting and treated me like a person not an inconvenience who fucks
up their nice statistics by being alive. They offered me
professionalism and allowed me a chance to speak like an adult with a
brain in my head. After years of contact with the DWP and Atos, this
shocked me and disarmed me. I couldn't read their responses. Where they
luring me in? Where they really being nice? I couldn't be sure to trust
them and I left feeling unsettled and unable to assess how the tribunal
had gone.

DLA tribunals don't usually give decisions there and then, unlike ESA
ones and I had to wait until Saturday morning's post to get my result.
They awarded me low rate care for two years, backdated to last September
and extended my low rate mobility for a further year, meaning the two
award lengths match for renewal. It also means I don't have to do my DLA
in the same month as my first ESA50 which is a nice bonus. I was
originally pleased to see the award, although pissed off that they'd
discounted my night needs, thinking I cried for you and you ignored it.
But then a sense of profound upset came over me.

I've been sick pretty much constantly for 20 years and still it
suckerpunches me when experts agree that I'm ill. I find it easier to
say to myself that I'm just not well today than accept I'm
probably never going to get completely well again or have back all the
things being ill has cost. To see an agreement that I am very unwell in
black and white knocked me and made me feel that for every progress I do
make, it's really just me kidding myself. I'm no closer to holding down
a full time job than I was two years ago. I'm still sick and struggling
despite all the therapy I've done and I can just picture myself doing
the tribunal roundabout for years to come. It felt heartwrenching and I
wobbled all week, only perking up slightly when the DWP paid the
backdated amount in my account this week.

Money doesn't buy you happiness. It doesn't buy you health, but it does
make it easier to pretend life is normal and for that extra support I
thank the tribunal for seeing sense and standing up for us when the DWP
refuses to. It's been a long 10 months, but I think I'm glad I did it if
only to remind myself what wonderful friends I have and to treat myself to the proper Miss Marple box set I've been eyeing up for years...

(I also like to take this moment to tell the Daily Mail to ram their filthy rag somewhere that means they have to start explaining their toilet needs to someone on minimum wage who hates sick people and see how easy 'just' filling a form in is...)

About Me

I started this blog as a way to talk to myself as I worked my way toward rebuilding my life after experiencing two rapes. Then other people started reading it too and I realised talking about myself wasn't enough and expanded it to having an opinion on everything, especially women and sexual violence. I want this to be a safe welcoming space so please assume all posts need a trigger warning for rape, PTSD, general trauma related crappiness and bad jokes. I'm thrilled anyone reads it and want everyone to feel welcome, including men who may have been victims. I talk about rape from a woman's perspective as that's my own experience, but don't want to exclude anyone who doesn't feel their experience is the same. Feel free to browse or make comments. These are moderated so any apologist crap hits the bin, but not to boost my ego. Anonymous comments or pseudonyms are fine by me since I only blog anonymously myself. Thanks for reading. I do reward you with the odd lighthearted post as well...